


best behavior

by goldcarnations



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Awkward Crush, F/M, Fluff, Humor, Rare Pairings, Summer Romance, Summer Vacation, and very awkward pining on zuko's end that's frankly extremely in-character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-14
Updated: 2020-07-14
Packaged: 2021-03-04 00:21:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,425
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24984496
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goldcarnations/pseuds/goldcarnations
Summary: “Gee, Zuko,” Ty Lee says when she catches him staring, her voice honeyed and lilting. If he lets himself listen he would admit that it might be almost melodic, but goddamn it, he’s not a sap, so itisn’t.It’s not melodic. Not if he can help it.
Relationships: Ty Lee/Zuko (Avatar), background Katara/Azula, background Sokka/Suki
Comments: 3
Kudos: 50





	best behavior

**Author's Note:**

> wrote this as a bday gift to myself which explains why it's so ridiculously self-indulgent. rare pairs + ty lee + modern au = happy girl :)

Someone’s planned a week-long summer vacation, and Zuko’s invited.

He’s not even completely certain whose idea it is in the first place or how he even got involved, but before he knows it Azula has added Zuko to this awful text chain of random people from high school that he’s had a _very_ mixed history with, half of whom he’s certain don’t even want Zuko there either. And they’re all assigning who’s bringing what drugs and who has an ID to buy alcohol and, before he’s even texted anything in the chat, Zuko’s already tasked with bringing limes and ginger beer because Jet is bringing vodka and they’re all going to make fucking _Moscow Mules_.

No one asks if Zuko actually wants to have Moscow Mules.

No one asks if he actually _wants to be there._

And that’s the other thing, the really annoying part—it’s that Zuko’s not really invited. He’s obliged. He’s _forced_. He doesn’t even technically want to go at all, okay, but the whole thing is being thrown at his own family’s fucking _vacation home_ , according to the next string of eighty-million texts, so what does that say about him if he doesn’t show up? 

Probably nothing that hasn’t already been said but—whatever.

He’s going. 

He’s _fine_.

He just doesn’t have high expectations about the whole event, is all.

* * *

Their vacation house comes with a pool.

Zuko grudgingly makes use of it. 

He lays down uneasily on the sun chairs, body flush against the mesh, resting his head against the lumpy pillow attached at the top. His arms lay limp beside him. Where the fuck is supposed to put his arms? He probably looks like an idiot.

He squints open an eye to survey his company, and unfortunately the entire vacation party is outside. Across the deck, Suki is reading a book, Mai is on her phone, Aang is swimming. Azula is perched at the edge of a fold-out chair, flirting—angrily? _Viciously?_ —with Katara. Sokka and Toph are shotgunning beers. Jet is asleep.

Ty Lee is doing cartwheels. 

Zuko shuts his eyes closed with a ferocious, embarrassed aggravation, trying desperately to distract himself with thoughts of anything else. Despite his thorough attempts, no amount of determined concentration can erase the outline of a bikini-clad Ty Lee upside down.

With his resolve weakening, he peeks an eye open.

Ty Lee’s upright now, which is much more bearable. She’s breathing hard. Her chest rises and falls in a perfect, pulse-stuttering rhythm.

She catches his gaze and winks.

His skin flushes, probably bright red, and looks away before anyone else can notice him staring. 

Good thing he burns in the sun like a motherfucker. Maybe that’ll hide his mortification.

* * *

The thing is that this—Ty Lee, her bikini, all of it—

It’s not technically...new stimuli.

He’s known Ty Lee for a grand total of fifteen years. More specifically, he’s been unwittingly entangled in her friend group due to fraternal reasons for fifteen years, which came with not only the memories of Ty Lee, but the memories of all three girls that comprised their tight knit friend group. 

The thing is, he should have been desensitized by now with anything she does. There had been plenty of horrors to draw from: tumultuous years of preadolescence and elaborate tea parties and playdates forced upon him by Azula, followed by strange, vicious years of middle school when Azula got unbearably catty and Mai kissed him for the first time and Ty Lee joined gymnastics. And, of course, high school, where Azula got even more catty and Mai broke up with him and Ty Lee became a cheerleader and, out of necessity, Zuko learned five helpful ways to cover up unsolicited boners, two of them to be used in the case of a cheer routine at a football halftime show.

Regardless, it’s not new in the slightest.

It’s actually more like terrible, disorienting deja vu. 

“If you ever date any of my friends again, I’ll rip your tonsils out of your throat,” Azula had told him during her sophomore year. He still remembers it in vivid clarity. He had believed her, of course.

He’s still certain that she’s capable of doing the same thing to him five years later. 

* * *

He’s still out at the pool the second day.

Ty Lee is doing cartwheels again.

He’s starting to think that there’s something going on with her and cartwheels. She does a lot of them. Maybe to show off, maybe not, but when she does it by the poolside in her tiny white bikini, the swells of her breasts abiding obediently, _noticeably_ by the rules of gravity, he thinks sullenly to himself that there’s no way that it isn’t attention seeking behavior at the very least. 

The diamond stud in her belly button winks cloyingly at him as she rights herself.

Yeah, definitely not as innocuous as she would have him—everyone—believe.

“Gee, Zuko,” Ty Lee says when she catches him staring, her voice honeyed and lilting. If he lets himself listen he would admit that it might be almost melodic, but goddamnit, he’s not a sap, so it _isn’t_. It’s not melodic. Not if he can help it. “You’re grumpy today.” She pauses. “Maybe even more grumpy than usual.”

“I’m fine,” he says. “I’m fucking—great. Perfect, even.”

She hums. 

“You’re not wearing a shirt today,” she remarks cheerfully. “You’re wearing swim trunks."

He remembers himself in that moment, looking down at his bare legs and subconsciously crossing his arms across his torso, feeling a familiar flush creep up his neck, and—fuck this. He's not self-conscious. She's just stating a fact. And he can sit on a fucking sun chair if he wants to in his swim trunks.

Zuko uncrosses his arms warily.

Ty Lee's eyes track from his biceps to his abdomen, surreptitious and fleeting, and then flick back to his gaze with a buoyant, deliberate ease. Her smile has shifted from something other than relentless cheer into something vaguely— _admiring_?

He must be hallucinating.

“Do you want to come into the pool with me?” Ty Lee asks, breaking the silence. It’s a favor for both of them, really. 

“No, thanks.”

“The water isn’t too cold.”

“I’m fine,” he says again.

Ty Lee tilts her head and pouts. Her bottom lip catches in the light, delicious and glossy, and that sickening, feral want curls once in the base of his torso. 

He thinks reluctantly about his tonsils. 

Maybe he’ll rip them out himself.

He stays stubbornly quiet.

“Join me later if you want,” she replies finally, and then backflips into the pool with an acrobatic grace. 

* * *

On the fourth day at the house, Sokka finally convinces Zuko to day-drink with him and their collective pile of alcohol. 

They create a horrible mess while making Moscow Mules.

Then they proceed to get absolutely shit-faced at three in the afternoon. 

Sokka does, specifically. Zuko stays on the pleasant, loose side of tipsy. The fun side. The bubbly side. There’s a laugh perpetually rising in his chest, overflowing from the alcohol. 

Actually, maybe Zuko’s closer to shit-faced than he thought.

“God, I love Suki, man,” Sokka’s saying, much louder than he needs to be, speaking into his solo cup. “Bro, like. She’s so amazing. And smart. And pretty. And… smart.”

Drunk Sokka is a handful. Zuko takes a long sip of vodka straight from the bottle, then passes it to Sokka, who downs the rest greedily in a ravenous gulp. Both of them have forgone actually mixing the alcohol together at this point.

“Suki is the best,” Sokka continues. “She just always—takes care of me. And she’s so fucking cool. She could literally have any guy and she just, like, picked me. I’m so lucky, bro.” He sighs once, content and lethargic. “I fucking love Moscow Mules.”

Zuko wants to point out that they’re not even really drinking Moscow Mules at this point, but the alcohol limits his capacity to invest in anything Sokka’s rambling about.

The alcohol curls in his veins, hot and lazy. 

His thoughts trip their way out of his mouth.

“Why do you think that Ty Lee does so many—flips? Cartwheels?”

Sokka looks up belatedly.

“What?” 

“She’s literally, like,” Zuko pauses to think. “She’s just always doing flips. And walking—walking on her hands.”

“Whoa,” says Sokka.

“Do you think it’s code?”

Sokka squints. “Do I think it’s—what do you— _code_?”

“Like is Ty Lee—is she flirting with me?” Zuko sits himself sluggishly upright and tries to give Sokka a meaningful look with an urgent intensity. “You know about girls, right?”

“Yeah, man. Yeah.”

“She’s so good at doing it too.” Zuko flops back. “Cartwheels, and handstands, and…” He closes his eyes. He rests. Resting feels good. “She’s just—if she’s flirting, I want to know.”

Sokka stares blankly back at him, then laughs in a sudden, violent high-pitched chortle that goes on for far too long. 

“Dude,” he slurs, wiping tears out of his eyes, “could you be any more obvious?”

Zuko blanches. "What?"

"That you like Ty Lee? That you _like_ like her?" 

There's something disparaging to be said about the juvenile nature of the term _like_ like, but Zuko's drunk. He's _really_ fucking drunk. He's _drunk_ drunk. He can't even suppress his own laugh.

 _God_ , Moscow Mules are good.

“Probably not,” he admits finally, and then Sokka dissolves into a second fit of laughter before trying unsuccessfully to pour more beer into his cup.

* * *

Ty Lee’s by the pool again, and, _yeah_ , of course she is. She practically lives on the deck at this point, her hair perpetually half damp, skin luminescent with sweat or maybe some sort of glittery sunscreen, stretched serenely by the poolside. 

She’s eating ice cream. 

“What brings you out here?” Ty Lee asks at the sight of him, her voice even more sugary than usual. She leans on a single arm with her legs in the water, the bowl balanced on her lap. Her mouth drags around her spoon.

Zuko ignores the question, mostly because of how distracting the image of her is. 

“Ice cream? _Here_?”

Keeping her spoon delicately between two fingers, Ty Lee deftly flips her long ponytail behind her in a contented flourish with the back of her hand. Her expression, as always, is daffily chipper. “It’s very refreshing, Zuko. You should give it a try.”

“I’m fine.”

She shrugs. “Suit yourself.”

He hovers over her, unsure of his next move.

Lucky for him, Ty Lee seems to anticipate his discomfort. “Come sit.” She pats the spot right next to her.

He gingerly lowers himself and dips his legs in the pool. The water sends an icy rush up his back at first, but then Ty Lee bumps her shoulder playfully against his bicep and he forgets all about trivial things, like body heat. 

He can feel those old feelings flaring up again, that giddy, uncontrollable desire churning raggedly in his stomach.

He stamps out his nerves with a vicious vigor. This isn’t high school anymore.

“You’re not doing flips anymore,” Zuko blurts out, an observation directed to no one in particular. “Or headstands. Or cartwheels.”

Ty Lee lifts a shoulder, unbothered by this remark. 

“I like to take breaks.”

“Like how you are from college?”

“If you believe breaks can be permanent, then maybe.”

“They—they probably can’t.”

She exhales, a soft, warm thing that betrays surprisingly little emotion. “I just think that’s up for interpretation.”

He furrows his brow. “So you’re not returning.”

Ty Lee doesn’t answer this time. He watches her tongue dart out to flick the rapidly melting ice cream at the base of her spoon. Deft, vivid red smeared in rich, luscious cream. Her puckered mouth is covered in it. 

Zuko looks away before he can lose his self-control, suddenly eager to fill up the silence.

“Well,” he says, “then what are you going to do now?” 

She perks up considerably at this question. “I dunno,” she says, her grey eyes wide and exuberant. “There’s so much out there to do! Maybe I can be a professional belly dancer. Or an animal rights activist. Or travel the world.”

“For all the cartwheels that you do, you could join the circus.”

Ty Lee pauses from eating and regards him with an alarmingly thoughtful appreciation.

“The circus,” she repeats, her voice dreamy.

“I’m—you know I’m joking? I didn’t really mean you should actually join the _circus_.”

She doesn’t respond, her face shifting into a wistful, delighted beam and scooping another bite into her mouth. Then she tilts her head to regard him with a cheerful consideration, her eyes bright on his, like she’s just now seeing him in a new light. 

There's a bit of ice cream lingering stubbornly on the corner of her lips, shiny and inviting. 

He really shouldn't be staring.

The thought still doesn't stop him.

* * *

“Do you remember back then when you threatened me about dating your friends?” 

“Well, that’s one way to greet someone.”

As if Azula actually cares about formalities. She’s stretched out across a sun chair when he approaches her, her elbows placed delicately on the arm rests, sunglasses hanging off her fingers.

Her voice is crisp and unforgiving, as is always. What did Zuko expect?

“Well, do you?”

Azula eyes him. “Vaguely.”

“You said you would—uh. Tear out my tonsils.”

She holds the gaze, but it shifts into something slightly less sharklike and a little more bemused. “Did I? That sounds like me.”

“Is that a... standing offer?”

There’s a silence as she thinks it over.

She’s probably figured out the context already. She had always been impossibly perceptive, even when they were kids. Not that Zuko was trying to be subtle or make it hard for her. 

He should’ve, though. At least he would finally be forcing some mental gymnastics on Azula.

“Well, Zuzu,” Azula croons finally, her voice dramatic and indulgent, “I’m glad I made a lasting impression, but aren’t you a little too old to be scared for your tonsils?”

Zuko frowns. 

“If you’re involved? Probably not.”

Her lip curls. “You don’t need me to babysit you and your relationships.”

“I’m not sure what you mean.”

Azula sighs deeply, apparently bored of the conversation already.

“Then exercise some critical thinking, you gigantic toddler,” she says. Her eyes have strayed from him, pinned intensely on something—or _someone_ —in the distance. “Now go away and brood somewhere other than the pool, for once. Your dreadfully emo overtones are making me want to kill myself.”

* * *

On their last evening, everyone is inside pounding shots. For good reason—the impending nighttime outside by the pool is heavy, humid, warm in a way that itches down Zuko’s back. Dusk is creeping a little closer than usual. The sky is orange.

Ty Lee does an impressive cartwheel that ends in a backbend. 

This time, Zuko lets his eyes follow her without resistance, because what the hell. They both know what they’re doing.

“You seem to like being out by the pool,” Ty Lee remarks once she straightens, stretching languorously. Her piercing glimmers with the flexing of her torso. “And yet you haven’t gone inside the pool once.”

He can feel himself blushing an angry crimson. “Yeah? So what?”

“You don’t have to get defensive.”

“I’m not.”

Ty Lee sets her hands primly on either side of her hips and peers at him in a way that appears as if she can read his mind. With a nervous, sinking start, Zuko figures that she probably can. She’s known him since they were in elementary school, after all.

Then she sits next to him on the sun chair. She turns toward Zuko so they’re square to each other, her round grey eyes directly on his, and he’s hyper aware of the fact that he can smell the faint hints of floral shampoo under the chlorine. He gulps at the proximity.

“You know that I don’t just do cartwheels all the time for no reason,” Ty Lee says. 

Actually, no, he doesn’t know that. 

“Um,” Zuko says.

She giggles once, a sweet, genuine sound that’s so infectious that he suppresses the urge to smile back with a desperate effort. “I’m not _obsessed_ with gymnastics, or whatever you probably think,” she adds. “It wasn’t _just_ for me. Although I do enjoy it.”

He swallows thickly. “Then what was it for?”

Ty Lee pauses, and then peers at him some more. “For show, mostly,” she answers thoughtfully, her voice light. “It’s kind of impressive when a girl can do a one-handed cartwheel, isn’t it?”

Zuko chokes. 

“It’s—” he searches for the words. “It’s something, all right.”

She looks pleased with that answer.

“Didn’t you ever wonder why I was always asking you to go into the pool with me?” she asks, her voice high and hypnotizing. 

“I tried not to wonder,” he rasps back.

“You should have.”

“I’m bad at picking up clues.”

“Well, now you don’t have to.”

His heart starts to hammer fast in his throat. His back is slick with sweat, but not unpleasantly so. The sky behind them is turning a very delicate shade of pink that matches the color staining Ty Lee’s cheeks.

He nearly forgets how to speak altogether when he feels her breath fan lightly across his mouth.

"What's Azula going to think?" he chokes out, holding on desperately to reality. He must be trapped in a daydream, or some sort of fantasy that he came up with when he was in high school, because there’s no way this is happening right now.

Ty Lee’s voice is laughing.

The look in her eyes is extraordinarily real.

"Gosh, it's cute that you think she cares."

“No, seriously,” he says, breathless. “She said—she said she’d remove my tonsils. To put it lightly.”

She giggles. Her mouth, lush and pink and glossy and practically pornographic on its own, is dangerously, heart-stoppingly close to his. 

“Well, I sure hope I’m worth the damage,” she replies, and then catches his mouth in hers, the touch of her lips dizzying and sweet and full of absolute, focused intent. She tastes like strawberries, which, he remembers dimly, is an aphrodisiac, or something like that. Everything about her is an aphrodisiac.

He had been right about her knowing what she was doing. 

She’s just a lot better at being subtle. 

* * *

The pool is warm that night. 

Ty Lee teaches him how to float on his back and stare up at the sky. It takes a surprising amount of concentration, to let himself drift in the static calm of the pool, but everything is perfectly tranquil. Like nature's harmony is trying to distract him from his thoughts.

There’s a full moon today. He’ll focus on that. 

“So what’s going to happen after this?” he croaks, staring determinedly at the moon. “After today?”

Ty Lee’s voice comes from somewhere right next to him, a lot closer than he expects. “Not sure,” she says. "I guess we'll know eventually."

"What do you think right now?"

“I think we'll just see what happens.”

“Yeah, but—” He drops his feet to the bottom of the pool and straightens, trying not to frown at her. “We might never see each other again.”

“I’m not so worried about that.”

“Why not? I’ll be going back to college. And you’re—well, joining the circus. Or whatever ends up happening.”

Ty Lee is an oil painting under the radiant moonlight, her hair slicked back against her head and her skin luminescent and achromatic. The light plays at the bridge of her nose and the swell of her lower lip, and for once her smile isn’t sonorously cheerful. The tilt of her lips is compelling, almost mysterious. It’s unnerving.

“Oh, Zuko,” she sighs, voice fond, _sage_ , like she knows so much more about him than he does. “You’re so sweet to worry. But will you relax? It’s not about the circus, or whatever changes in the short term." She pauses, her smile widening to its familiar sunny ardor. "The best things are just so unexpected, you know?” 

She grabs his hand underwater, threads her fine-boned fingers through and then squeezes once, her eyes earnest and gleaming, even in the dark. 

He considers the moment in context. He’s here. He’s fine. His tonsils are still intact. And with her close like this, body pressed against his and their hands clasped together, everything has sort of—exceeded expectations.

So he pulls her closer.

He squeezes back.

The moon stays blindingly bright until dawn.

**Author's Note:**

> [my tumblr/shithole/etc](https://shakespeareans.co.vu/)


End file.
